The Honeymoon Abduction
by wendymarlowe
Summary: Grabiner's father takes steps to ensure his son can't ignore his new bride forever - he kidnaps the young Mrs. Grabiner and magically transports the married couple to Revane Cottage for a belated honeymoon. Professor Grabiner is then faced with a dilemma - how can he free his wife from the magical spells that bind her, without giving in to the passions he has tried so hard to hide?


"So you're the girl who has made a laughingstock of my son."

I sat up in bed and pulled my blanket up to my chin, blinking against the sudden bright light hovering in the air over the stranger's left shoulder. It took me a moment to recall myself from the dream I had been having and to realize where I was – home, halfway through summer break. Ellen and Virginia weren't here to help me fight off whoever this angry stranger was.

And then his words registered . . . "You're his father, Viscount Grabiner."

"My title is Lord Grabiner, Viscount Montague, which you would have known if you had bothered to learn anything about the nobility you've apparently married into," he corrected. "What did you do to him, you foolish girl?"

I opened my mouth to reply, but closed it again. Who was he to come into my bedroom in the middle of the night and berate me? I was starting to understand a bit more about why Hieronymous Grabiner hated his father so much. What kind of man would do that?

"You've no right to interfere," I said as firmly as I could manage with a strange wizard in my room. "The relationship between Professor Grabiner and me is none of your business, and I'll scream if you don't get out of my room this very instant."

"Insolent chit – you think you can defy me?" A wave of magic struck me full in the throat and suddenly I couldn't make any noise at all, much less yell for help. "My son has deigned to finally marry, but he has once again neglected to take his duty to his family line seriously. I have prepared Revane Cottage for your honeymoon – a long-overdue honeymoon, I might add – and you will join him there." He noted my silent glare. "Neither of you will be leaving until I'm satisfied he's no longer making a mockery of the Grabiner name. Is that clear?"

I may not have been able to scream, but I could still spit. I think it caught him by surprise, but he merely cleaned the spot off his robe with a wave of his hand as if it were a stray strand of cat hair. Then he circled his wand around me once, a greenish light flashed, and my eyelids were too heavy to keep open any more.

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The dawn was almost breaking when I awoke again. The light was too faint to make out the colors in the strange room – I could just see the window in the wall in front of me, bracketing a slowly lightening sky. And in between me and the window was the silhouette of someone else asleep on the bed. My husband.

It still felt odd to even think that word. We had parted on a good note – I had spent most of the summer dreaming about that gentle kiss – and he had been as good as his word about writing to me during the break. But even though I was finally ready to admit to myself that I might want more from this marriage than a simple magical contract, I couldn't bring myself to say the word "husband" out loud.

A strange heaviness suffused my body as I lay there, watching him breathe and watching the dawn light begin to creep in the window and illuminate his body. I was intrigued to see that he slept in only a pair of loose-fitting pajama trousers, his upper half bare to the cool morning air. We were both lying on top of the coverlet – wouldn't he be warmer beneath it?

I went to pull the blankets up over myself – and nothing happened. I could see my hands resting casually in front of my body as I lay there on my side, but when my brain told them to move they just . . . didn't. Neither would my legs. I could feel the air against my calves, could feel the silkiness of the coverlet under my skin, but somehow my limbs wouldn't obey my instructions.

My scream came out as a gentle puff of air, silent and ineffectual. My husband was asleep less than a yard away and I couldn't even alert him to my panic! My magic was useless without my hands or my wand and there was nothing I could do. I could feel my breathing speed up, keeping pace with my galloping heart.

I don't know how long I lay there – it felt like days, but it was probably less than an hour – before he groaned and rolled over, bringing his face to within only inches of mine. I did the only thing I could – I screamed. A lot. Over and over and over and over and –

The warmth of my breath directly in his face finally caused him to open his eyes. He came awake slowly, arching his spine like a cat in a sunny window, before suddenly snapping his attention to my face.

"Mary?" His voice was rough with sleep. "What are you . . ." He broke off and looked at something beyond me. "This is Revane Cottage." When his gaze came back to mine, it was sharp and angry. "Care to explain?"

Oh God, please don't let him think this was my idea! An image of him yelling at me from when he thought I had bragged about being his wife assaulted my mind – he had been so angry. So betrayed. And so frightening.

But I couldn't explain, couldn't do anything except try to breathe and hope that my panic and my pleading were evident in my eyes. I held his gaze as intently as I could, praying he would understand.

As the silence stretched, his anger lessened, replaced by concern. "Mary?" He propped himself up on one elbow, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was lying shirtless in a bed next to me. "Please tell me this isn't what it seems. Tell me you didn't set this up as some sort of trap for me."

I tried – tried to say something, tried to scream again. And once again, all I could manage was a pitiful puff of air.

His eyes narrowed, then I felt a nudge of something against my consciousness. An empathy spell. I tried to reach for him again, and when my arm wouldn't move it immediately brought back more of the panic I had been just barely keeping at bay. Panic, frustration, fear –

"By the spirits – you're under a silence spell, aren't you?" He reached for my face, hesitated, then touched one long finger to my cheek. "You're terrified. Hold on." He sat up and switched on the lamp behind him, then swung his legs around to sit cross-legged in the middle of the bed and study me for a long minute.

His attention brought all my old insecurities back to the fore, tenfold. I was wearing a new pajama set I had just bought a month earlier with some foolish idea that it might have been the kind of thing he would have liked. It was pale green and silky and I imagined I would feel sexy if he were to ever see me in pajamas, which I knew at the time would always be an unlikely fantasy. And now I was realizing that nothing would have prepared me for that steady perusal of my body while all I could do was lie there and wait. I couldn't even shiver, my body refusing to follow my brain's lead.

"I'm going to try . . . I'm sorry, Mary, I don't know the best way to undo all this." He rested the tip of his wand against my throat and traced a pattern. "Try now – can you speak?"

"Ididn'tknowI'msosorryIcouldn'tstophim-" The words poured out of my mouth. I could feel my cheeks heating, but I didn't know how to explain – I didn't understand it all myself. One moment I was in my own bed and the next I was-

"Hush," he whispered, touching a finger to my lips. The tenderness of the contact did what my self-control couldn't: I shut up.

"It was your father," I croaked out when I could finally sort my words from my thoughts. "He woke me up in the middle of the night and said I had made a laughingstock of you. And he said that he was putting us here for a honeymoon and neither of us would leave until you took your family name seriously, whatever that means. And then I woke up here and I can't move and I don't know what to do." I could feel tears welling while I explained, but I was powerless to stop them.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with the tips of his fingers. "And once again, I owe you an apology for dragging you into my life. I regret that you have been subjected to his acquaintance – more than you could know." He paused, then added, "I'm afraid I have an idea how he might have done this binding spell, but you're not going to like it."

"I don't like any of this so far, other than getting to see you." The words were out before I thought, and I immediately wished I could take them back. Hieronymous had never given me any indication he would welcome a relationship any closer than perhaps vague friendship. Would he be upset at my admission?

I tried to prepare myself for a cutting rejection, but it never came. Instead, he let out a long sigh and wouldn't meet my eyes. "I wouldn't have asked to meet like this either," he said, "but I have missed you as well."

Neither of us said anything for a long moment, but he was the first one to recover. "I suspect my father is playing a complex game – he always does. I recognize the basic form of this binding spell, but there are . . . details he has improvised."

"What details?" From the way he was twisting the coverlet in his grip, I suspected I didn't want to know.

"The spell is rather like tying a series of knots, of sorts. Except in this case, the knots are invisible and exceedingly complicated, and the . . . ends of the rope, as it were, are buried among other layers of the spell. I'm going to choose to assume he constructed the spell elsewhere and simply teleported the entire tangle onto you in one go, because the alternative would require me to hunt him down and kill him."

That sounded . . . ominous. And frightening. I tried to shrug, but my body didn't move. "I wouldn't know – he silenced me and put me to sleep, I think. All I know is waking up here. Is that the part you said I wouldn't like?"

Maybe it was just the dawn light coming in the window behind him, but I could have sworn he was blushing. "No, I . . . the binding spell is tied all around you. Which means I shall be obliged to – to feel it out." He glanced away, then back to my face. "And since the silence was underneath the binding spell, you won't be able to speak while I do it. I'll have to put the silence spell back so I can feel where the original lay."

Silenced again? I was almost over the panic at not being able to move as long as I could talk to him, but I wasn't sure I would be able to bear being inspected for magical spells without being able to at least ask for reassurance.

"Can you–" My voice came out in a squeak, so I tried again. "Can you use that empathy spell again? The thought of being not even able to scream–"

Was that relief on his face? "I could do that," he said. "I . . . think that would make me feel better about this, too." He traced a complex slash in the air with his wand and I felt that familiar tug at the edges of my mind. "I promise I'll stop the moment you feel uncomfortable, Mary."

"I trust you." I couldn't find the words to tell him exactly what I was feeling, but at least the empathy spell should help. Although . . . "Your father isn't watching us or something, is he?"

He glanced around the room, which was fully visible now in the combined light of the lamp and the sunrise. "Better not be." He leapt off the bed – impressively agile for a man of his height – and stalked around to somewhere behind me. I heard the rattle of a locked doorknob, then a thump – and then everything got darker. The window disappeared, and my view of the world shrank to just the bed and the dubious light of the bedside lamp.

"I cast a darkness spell along the walls and the ceiling," he said from just behind my back. "And a silence spell for good measure. If he is trying to spy on us, he's not going to see or hear anything." The bed dipped, which I assumed meant he had just taken a seat somewhere just above where my head was. "Are you ready?"

"I am." My words sounded braver than I felt, but I wasn't lying – I did trust him.

He leaned over me, then, to re-trace the magic pattern against my throat with the tip of his wand. It tickled. My voice didn't feel any different, but when I made a few experimental noises, nothing came out. I had to fight to keep the panic at bay, but it was easier this time now that I knew he was watching. He waited patiently for me to master my fear, then I heard the click of his wand against a hard surface as he set it down.

"This may take a few minutes. Or several." He stood and gingerly rotated my shoulders and hips, rolling me from my side to my stomach. My face was still turned toward where the window had been, away from him, but I could feel the light brush of his fingers as he laced them through my hair and over the back of my neck. It felt impersonal and yet strangely intimate. He worked in silence, but I could feel the aura of concentration radiating off of him. That delicate touch feathered across my shoulders, ran down my back, and stroked each arm from shoulderblade to fingertips. I would have shivered if my body had let me, and I wondered what his empathy spell was telling him right now.

"Nothing," he said. I started inwardly, assuming he had read my mind about the empathy spell, but he merely moved down to my bare feet and continued his exploration. "He was heavy-handed with the binding," he said. "Undoubtedly to keep me from being able to unravel it without significant effort. Are you doing all right, Mary?"

I tried to nod, but had to settle for visualizing something happy and peaceful. I thought about a trip my family took when I was ten – we went canoeing in Minnesota for a week, camping whenever we got tired of paddling. I focused on one particular afternoon, when we reached our campsite early and had time to just sit and watch the sun set over the lake as we cooked our supper. Calm and peaceful.

"That's good – whatever you were thinking of, it came through clearly," he said. "Ignore me and keep that thought."

It was getting harder to hold that idyllic summer evening in my head, though, the higher his fingers drifted up my legs. He hit a ticklish spot just behind my knees and I jumped. Not physically, of course, but the memory shattered and suddenly all I could think about was that all-too-brief kiss during the May ball at the end of the school year. Not at all calm and peaceful. That moment had been confusing and wonderful and I had relived it almost every night since. It was also not something I wanted him to notice with his empathy spell.

"Mary?" His response to the change in my mood was immediate. He grabbed his wand, rolled me over onto my back, and traced a gentle circle against my throat. My voice came back mid-cough, and I felt the tickle at the edge of my consciousness recede.

"Was that too much?" Anxiety lined his face as he looked down into mine. "I apologize once again – it is as I had feared, the binding spell is incredibly complex. I'm afraid if I pry more forcefully, it will pull in other places and I'll hurt you."

"No, it's okay. I'm just ticklish. So . . . keep going?"

His glance flicked down the rest of my body and he swallowed. "We're, ah, running out of . . . potential places for the loose ends of the spell to be."

Was he nervous? The idea of him being off-kilter made me feel quite a bit less so, strangely enough. It was nice knowing I wasn't the only one reacting. Although he was right – he had already covered most of the less sensitive places on my body. All that was left was . . .

Now I was the one to blush. And yet, the idea of him running those long fingers over my breasts, my stomach, my thighs – my brain seemed to overload right there, but I knew there was more. And obviously so did he.

But he wasn't willing to take that step – not with me silent and frozen in place. And if he didn't, then what would happen? Would I be bound here forever? Would he whisk me back to the school and leave me to Professor Potsdam's care? Regardless of how we got here, regardless of my current state, this was the chance I had been dreaming about for months, and I wasn't willing to let it go. An idea hit me.

"Can you loosen the binding spell on one of my arms for a minute?"

He frowned. "Probably at least partially, although it wouldn't bring us any closer to untying the rest of you. It would just make the rest of the spell that much tighter. And I'd have to put it back in place before continuing. But would that . . . make you feel more comfortable if I did that?"

Oh, if only he knew . . . "Please."

"Which arm?"

"Either. I just – I need to move, just a little."

He inclined his head and slid around me so he was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed with my left hand in his lap. I couldn't turn my head to look, but I could feel his palm supporting the back of my hand and the tip of his wand probing each fingertip in turn. My fingers tingled where he had touched them, pins and needles like when a leg falls asleep, but by the time he had worked his way to my wrist I could wiggle my fingers.

"Hold still – just a few minutes longer."

I stopped wiggling, but I was still giddy about finally being able to move. At least a tiny bit. The tingling spread as he worked, until at last my forearm had some range of motion and he put down his wand. I still couldn't move my shoulder, but it was enough. His face came into my field of vision and I was surprised to see beads of perspiration on his forehead.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"I just hate that bastard for doing this to you."

"I'm beginning to agree." Growing up under the supervision of an endless succession of servants must have been horrible, but surely it couldn't have been any worse than a childhood spent in the presence of Lord Grabiner, Viscount Montague.

I had to physically use my now-freed hand to turn my head so I could see all of him at once. He looked magnificent. The semi-darkness suited him, emphasizing the planes of his bare chest and the contours of his face, and his hair curled wildly down to his shoulders in a way which must have daily offended his need for order and dignity.

"Give me your hand," I ordered, offering up my own. He clasped my hand gingerly, as if afraid he would crush it. Instead of holding his hand like we were on a date to the mall, though, I shifted to grab his wrist and bring his palm to my face. He hesitated, but didn't pull away.

"Hieronymous – I'm giving you permission to feel for that spell right here." I dragged his palm across my cheek and kissed it when it passed my lips. He swallowed – hard – and I reveled in that tiny motion. It gave me the courage to ask, "Shall I show you where else you should check?"

His eyes bored into mine. "Mary, are you sure–"

He broke off as I lifted his hand and brought it back down on the flat of my stomach. Now both of us were silent except for our breathing. The look on his face was intoxicating – better than anything I could have dreamed. I slid his hand upward to my right breast, praying he wouldn't balk and throw my boldness back in my face.

He didn't. He was holding his entire body completely still – almost as still as mine – but I heard his quick pant, saw the way his eyes unfocused for a second, and I knew he was as intent on this as I was.

"Touch me here, please," I said in a much huskier voice than I had ever heard come out of my mouth before. "Check carefully. Thoroughly."

He licked his lips then – just a tiny dart of his tongue, but suddenly I was the one with blurry vision. Luckily I didn't need to be able to see in order to guide his hand back down, lower across my stomach, and then dipping under –

"Mary!" My name sounded like a prayer on his lips. "I don't – I shouldn't –"

I released his wrist and let my hand flop back down to the silken coverlet between us. "Yes you should. If you're asking for my consent, I'm giving it to you. Silence me, re-bind my arm if you have to, but don't try to tell me you're going to leave me frozen here helplessly for my own good."

His hand stilled, fingers resting lightly against my skin under the elastic of my panties and pajama pants. "I don't want you to feel like you have to go through with this because of what my father did," he choked out. "It's bad enough that he – we can find another way . . ."

"I'm not asking your father. I'm asking you."

And with that, something seemed to break inside him. He withdrew his hand – slowly – and the caress of his fingertips across my sensitive skin made my throat go dry. But then he framed my face with both hands and leaned down to plant a tender kiss on my lips, and I knew he wasn't going to say no.

Re-binding my arm was much quicker than extricating it, a fact I was extremely grateful for. The pressure in my chest eased a bit, and I realized the magic bindings really had been squeezing my ribs more tightly than before. This time around, though, the lack of motion wasn't distressing in the least – it was welcome, in a way, because it meant he was that much closer to –

And then that light touch at the edges of my mind, letting me know he was listening. I thought about the kiss at the end of the school year, the kiss just seconds ago, the way his hands felt when they were skimming over my skin . . . everything I could to make him realize just how badly I wanted him to give up that iron control and touch me again.

He straightened abruptly, and I was concerned I had laid the emotion on too strong. Was he really not attracted to me? If he decided to walk off and leave me there because of some antiquated notion that it was for my own good . . .

"You're worrying." I felt the weight of his hand land on my belly, outside my field of vision, and inwardly I jumped. "Didn't you just tell me you trusted me?"

Yes, but . . . trust him to do what? I absolutely trusted him to protect me. I trusted him to be honest with me – I had never wanted him to lie to me for my own good, and over the course of our marriage (still a strange word!) we seemed to have worked that out.

But none of that would transmit through the empathy spell. I had to overcome that worry with something else – with wanting him so badly I couldn't worry anymore.

I lowered my gaze to his chest. He had the lean figure of an academic, lanky rather than muscular, but the muscles were definitely there. And tempting. If I had been able to use my arms, I might have reached for him right then. As it was, I had to settle for hot stares and trying to imagine what he would taste like if I were to kiss him right in the center of his breastbone. A bit like sweat, probably, since he was covered in a light sheen of perspiration despite being shirtless. But what else?

My romance novel research failed me. Ever since school finished, I had been reading every romance I could find – we may not have been a "real" marriage, but we couldn't have been the only people ever to fall into that situation. And – at least in books – we weren't. The books also went a long way toward shoring up the gaping holes in my practical education.

So I knew, or at least assumed I knew, exactly what those loose-fitting black pants were covering. Lean hips to match his lean build, tightly muscled thighs, and . . . okay, so I was still a bit fuzzy on the actual visuals, but in my hotter dreams I had envisioned a hundred scenarios in which he would appear at my house and carry me away to be ravished. None of them had included magical bondage, but the next hundred very well might.

"Close your eyes."

I dragged my gaze back to his face, a bit guilty at having been caught staring at his lap, but apparently only the "lust" portion of my thoughts had come through clearly. I obeyed. And was rewarded by the feel of his hands gently framing my face, rubbing my temples, and slowly tracing down over my features. His index finger lingered on my lower lip, and I couldn't help myself – I opened my mouth and sucked the tip inside.

His gutteral groan cut through the unnatural silence. My eyes flew open – that, at least, the romance novels had been right about. He was staring at me with a mix of fascination and lust on his face, but his hand stayed frozen on its path across my jaw. So I sucked at his fingertip again, swirling my tongue around it for good measure before letting it slide out of my mouth.

He closed his eyes and dragged in a ragged breath, expelling it slowly. When he opened his eyes again, they were unfocused for a long moment before he brought them back to mine. And I melted at the heat I saw in them.

"Great stars, Mary." His voice was barely above a whisper. "I can't even . . ."

I flicked my gaze downward, toward the rest of my immobile body, and back to his. He took the hint. His deft hands continued their exploration, down the column of my neck and over my collarbone. He massaged my sternum gently, but we both knew that's not where I wanted his hands.

And then he slid his palm up and over my left shoulder, dragging the strap of my sleeveless pajama top with it. I couldn't see what he had revealed, but I could read it on his face. When he reversed the direction of his palm, to tug the left side of my pajama top down and expose my breast, I could feel the cool air against my heated skin. He paused to admire his handiwork for a moment, then leaned in for another kiss.

Not on my mouth. I gasped at the feel of his wet kiss against my nipple, then moaned silently as he massaged my breast with his whole hand while he toyed with his lips and his teeth and his tongue. I was aching with need by the time he was finished running his hand over my breast, supposedly examining the spell. And then he did the same thing to my other side.

How did the women in those romance novels survive this erotic torture? Suddenly my "research" - such as it were – seemed woefully inadequate. He slid lower, kisses and caresses working in tandem to leave me throbbing even though I could do nothing in return.

Or could I? I closed my eyes as he nibbled a particularly sensitive spot in the tender crease just inside my hipbone. I might not have been able to touch him physically, but I knew he was listening in to my emotions. And one – lust – was just about all I could manage right now. But could I have the same effect on him that he was having on me?

I opened my eyes again and devoured his physique with my gaze. I certainly hadn't had enough practical experience to have a preferred "type," but I rather suspected Hieronymous would be it – lean and agile, with a dry wit and a keen mind. I focused on his pants – or rather, the somewhat obvious shape inside them. Yes, he was definitely enjoying this as much as I was. I envisioned reaching for him, sliding my palm across the flat plane of his abdomen, and dipping my fingers down inside the fabric to tease him. In my imagination I was confident and I knew exactly what I was doing, of course, and I could picture him dragging in another of those shuddering breaths as he tried to assimilate all the sensations at once. And then I would pull him closer, reaching for his –

"This is it," he said, dragging me back from my fantasizing. "I can feel one end of the spell stuck down here." He hitched my hips upward a bit as he spoke, tugging my pajama pants and my panties down a few vital inches. And then dipped his head.

The air left my lungs in a startled whoosh when his lips touched my skin. He worked his fingertips even further downward, dragging my clothes with them, until finally he cursed and teleported every stitch I was wearing into the air behind him. I saw my pajamas appear in midair somewhere behind his shoulder, hang for a second defying gravity, then drop down to rest on his pillow.

I had no time to think about them, though, because he was tracing lines across my thighs and hips and my waist and then pressing kisses into the flesh he had just revealed. I could only lie there, perfectly still, and look at the air over his head as he focused his attention on that one vital place on my body. "I'm going to undo this wretched spell first," he growled against my skin. "Then I'm going to finish what we started – for both of us."

Un-knotting the spell took several endless minutes, during which he plucked and pulled and occasionally unraveled a loop from somewhere around my body. It didn't feel like an immediate release, more of a gradual lessening of the magic that bound me. I didn't realize how close he was until he pressed another kiss into the curls between my legs and I jumped – as I had been doing since he started – except this time my body actually moved.

"Ha!" He unraveled another loop from around my legs, then one from around my waist. I couldn't physically feel the spell, but I could feel the lack of it. When he got the spell strands in my hair mostly unraveled, I lifted my head to watch him work. It was mesmerizing.

I still was under a silence spell, though, so I couldn't say anything encouraging – not that my brain was working properly, given how sensitive the rest of my body was right now. But I could move more, so I did.

He moaned aloud when I lifted my hips to meet his kiss. He redoubled his efforts to clear away the last vestiges of the spell, frantically swatting away stray strands and sliding his hands over ever inch of my skin he could find. I moved to meet him when I could. And then my arms were free and I could reach down and spear my fingers through all that unruly hair. It felt just as silky as it looked.

He reached for his wand without looking up. I felt a tickle as he magically whisked the last of the binding spell away, then there was a loud pop and a crackle and in my peripheral vision I could see a small fire burning merrily away in the middle of the stone floor.

"Good riddance to a terrible spell," he said against my skin. His chest was pressed against my thighs, and when he spoke I could feel the rumble of his voice through my entire body.

Suddenly his kisses – amazing as they were – weren't enough. I hooked my hands under his armpits and tugged him upward. He came willingly, intentionally letting his bare skin slide against mine as he worked his way up my body until we were lying pressed chest-to-chest with him on top of me. His weight felt wonderful. As did the hard pressure I could feel between my legs.

I ran my hands over the muscles of his back, reveling in how I could feel his heartbeat through the wall of his chest. And then I ran them down further, sliding past the small of his back, under the hem of his pajama pants, to cup his derriere. I knew precisely nothing about what characteristics made one person's rear end feel better than another's, but his felt . . . right.

On instinct, I hitched my hips upward at the same time as I squeezed with both hands. The male portion of his anatomy felt absolutely marvelous against the female portion of mine. The rush of breath from his chest and his muted curse were even better.

He propped himself up high enough to look me full in the face. "How is your green magic, Mary?"

I tried to answer – but I was still silenced. I had to settle for blowing another puff of air in his face. His eyebrows lowered momentarily, then he touched his wand to my throat again. It took him two tries to work the dispel properly, probably because I ground my hips against him again during his first attempt and he lost his focus.

"Your father's spells may have brought us here together," I said against his neck as soon as my voice returned, "but let's keep him waiting on that grandchild." I planted a kiss against the faint stubble under his jawline. "Personally, I'd like to get a bit more practice before that prospect comes up again."

"That's the best suggestion I've heard all day," he groaned, and then his black silk trousers joined mine in a magical heap on the other side of the bed.

I knew the basic mechanics of sex, but I was unprepared for the sheer intensity of the experience. He braced his body over mine with one forearm, but then his other hand slipped down to where our bodies were suddenly touching. And then a moment later he was ready, poised – and waiting for me to make the first move.

I scooted downward a fraction, and I could feel the blunt head of his erection probing the entrance to my body. It was a novel experience, but not at all frightening. I wriggled a bit more, slowly impaling myself on him. It seemed that was all he needed from me – he took the lead from there, flexing his hips and gliding smoothly inward until he was seated fully inside me.

"Great stars – you feel incredible," he moaned. Then he shifted his weight, just enough to create some friction as he moved – and then I was the one moaning. "That's it, Mary," he pleaded. "Tell me how I feel inside you. Come for me."

"I –" Whatever I had been about to reply transformed into a long wordless string of sounds as I completely lost my ability speak, this time silenced only through the magic of the sensations coursing through me. He smiled, then, wicked and frighteningly sexy, and let his hand drift between our bodies to where I was aching the most for his touch.

I'd like to say I gave as good as I got, but that would be a lie. I learned that my husband approached giving pleasure the way he approached studying and magic – with a single-minded devotion and a focus I could never hope to match. All I could do was to accept his attentions and ride the wave after wave of sensations that slammed through me. When he finally brought me to the peak I had been striving for, I shuddered and I may have screamed and I absolutely came apart. I could feel my internal muscles clenching around the thickness of him inside me, and that made me come even harder. And then he was moving, sliding in and out and he gave a long shudder and collapsed against my chest, our naked bodies pressed against each other from shoulder to feet.

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He rolled off me a minute later, tossing his wand onto the table to make space on the bed for his body next to mine. An unruly lock of his hair draped itself over his face, and I couldn't help reaching for it to tuck it behind his ear.

"So what now?" I asked.

He shifted so he could look into my face. "I suppose that depends on you," he said. "There's no point anymore in me insisting I couldn't possibly have any sexual interest in you while you're a student."

"Was that a lie?"

He smiled and let his eyelids drift closed. "You're a remarkable young woman, Mary. And – as you've pointed out before – I'm not that old."

I felt a sudden desire to tease him. "So does that mean you've forgiven me for that valentine I sent you?"

He let out a short huff of laughter. "After what we just did, I think I've forgiven you for things you haven't even done yet." He opened his eyes again, and they were bright with emotion. "I'm not going to forgive my father for what he did to you, but I'm not sorry about the result."

His father. "We're still trapped here, though . . . what do we do now?"

He grinned at me then, a boyish smirk I never thought I'd see on that particular face, and reached out to pull the length of my body flush against his once again. "In a bit, we can start looking for a way out. First, however . . ." He captured my mouth in a long, slow kiss, then rolled over to grab his wand once again. "I believe you missed out on something." He pressed the wand into my hand, then traced a jagged slash in the air – and suddenly I could read his emotions as easily as he'd been reading mine. They were full of desire, yes, but also . . . hope. And respect. And, as he pressed me back into the mattress with another drugging kiss . . . I think I felt something that could have been love.


End file.
